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Trusting Strangers, Not Institutions—Navigating the Complicated Landscape of Platforms

World-renowned trust expert and University of Oxford lecturer Rachel Botsman’s new book, Who Can You Trust? How Technology Brought Us Together – and Why It Could Drive Us Apart, explores questions of transparency, scale, and ownership that are at the heart of the sharing economy. Botsman says she “became obsessed with understanding how strangers could trust one another through technology,” from apps and platforms like Uber and Airbnb to the dark web. Seemingly paradoxically, technology is facilitating trust between strangers at the same time as trust in institutions is eroding globally. Botsman argues that the narrative that trust is imploding is problematic—this tends to worsen the problem, Botsman says, and we’re naturally a pretty trusting species. One upside to the reinvigorated conversation about trust is that we now see trust as an asset that needs to be protected, not a given.

To further complicate the already complex trust landscape, tech companies have become dominant institutions themselves relatively recently, and now find themselves implicated in the backlash against income inequality, fake news, and looming automation. Much of this backlash, Botsman says, is driven by a lack of accountability, and in particular, the sense that different rules apply to different people. Throughout history, the powerful have often benefited from a lack of accountability, but Botsman believes that the scale of these issues have changed. “Technology is accelerating the pace we’re leaping, and the degree with which we’re leaping,” says Botsman.

Platforms are situated at a particularly unique place at this juncture between 20th century rules and regulations, and 21st century innovation. Their technology enables strangers to trust one another enough to receive or give a ride, or to stay in someone else’s home. But after facilitating the initial interaction, how much responsibility does the platform bear for what happens between the users? The pendulum has swung recently, Botsman argues, and users don’t believe the trust enabler should throw their hands up and walk away. Part of the problem with increased efficiency, according to Botsman, is that eliminating so-called “unnecessary friction” in a user’s experience might mean reducing people-to-people interaction.

When it comes to regulating platforms, Botsman argues that the solution has to be inherent in the system itself, rather than top-down in the form of compliance. She is optimistic about the potential of blockchain, though Botsman admits she doesn’t personally believe that systems can be completely decentralized. Whether or not blockchain ends up replacing platforms or supplementing them, Botsman believes the distribution of value needs to be rethought, particularly in terms of the allocation of dividends. Botsman also encourages viewers to think about privilege and how that affects trust—for example, women who stay in domestic abuse situations because they don’t have the credit history necessary to rent their own apartments could stand to benefit from a new, tech-based reputation system. “If we get this right and we use technology in the right way, it could really unlock opportunities for people to make these systems far more inclusive,” Botsman says.